Instant Messaging (IM) can communicate text messages in near real time, making IM useful for conversing with people. Typically an IM conversation, whether it is one-on-one or involves multiple participants, ends when your IM client is closed. If IM is conducted in a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) system, closing the client terminates the SIP session. Further, IM conversations generally have dead time where there is no activity and messages are not exchanged. SIP generally uses a time out feature to close stagnant SIP sessions. Thus, SIP does not and cannot maintain an IM conversation across multiple SIP sessions. Further, if a user stops an IM session on one IM client, there is no way to restart the IM conversation on another IM client.